Madurai district police have busted an engineering admission racket using forged documents with the arrest of a student of an engineering college in Tirupparankundram recently.
So far, the Tirupparankundram police have received nine complaints from students, including girls.
Each of the students had given as much as Rs. 5 lakh as donation besides Rs. 60,000 as college admission fee, the Superintendent of Police, V. Balakrishnan, said.
The police have registered a case against one T. Sivakumar, the prime accused, and the student, Sivanishanth.
Pleads innocence
The arrested boy, Sivanishanth, had pleaded innocence claiming that he had introduced the students as per the promise of Sivakumar of getting them admission, without knowing his intention of defrauding them.
The police said that Sivakumar had claimed himself to be a public relations officer in a university.
He had said that he had close connections with the management of the reputed engineering college (which does not collect any capitation fee for admission) and had identified Sivanishanth as his agent for bringing students seeking admission to him.
After taking money, Sivakumar had issued an admission notification to the students, by forging the signature of the college principal.
“He had downloaded the logo of the college through the internet,” the Inspector of Police, S. Jeyachandran, said.
The college authorities grew suspicious when the admission notification was handed over to them.
The authorities explained to the students that it was a fake document and no such admission was made for them.
Mr. Jeyachandran said that only nine cases were reported so far and the exact number of persons duped by the tricksters was not known.
Absconding
Efforts are being taken to arrest Sivakumar, who is absconding.
